Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on the 14th of February, 1834 (IA b31879792).pdf/5

 HUNTERIAN ORATION.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN;

THE enlightened and public-spirited individuals, who instituted this anniversary-DR. BAILLIE, the nephew, and SIR EVERARD HOME, the brother-in- law, of JOHN HUNTER-could not have supposed such a meeting necessary to perpetuate the memory and fame of their departed friend; the greatest man whom this country has produced in medical science, without excepting even the immortal discoverer of the circulation; perhaps the greatest man in the combined characters of physiologist and surgeon that the whole annals of medicine can furnish. His genius and his labours wrought such a change in the sciences, to which his life was devoted, that his name is familiar wherever they are cultivated; it is pronounced with as much veneration in other countries, as in that which gave him birth, and which proudly points to him as one of her most gifted sons.